25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Joanne Woodward

October 25, 2019

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an Academy Award-winning American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman.

Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons. Her middle name, “Gignilliat”, originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother’s love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name – “Joanne”. Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh’s partner and future husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1979, in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him and he told her he remembered her doing it.

Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was in the second grade. Her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia. They moved once again when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced. She graduated from Greenville High School in 1947, in Greenville, South Carolina. Woodward won many beauty contests as a teenager. She appeared in theatrical productions at Greenville High and in Greenville’s Little Theatre, playing Laura Wingfield in their staging of The Glass Menagerie directed by Robert Hemphill McLane. She returned to Greenville in 1976 to play Amanda Wingfield in another Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie. She had also returned in 1955 for the premiere of her debut movie, Count Three And Pray, at the Paris Theatre on North Main Street.

Woodward majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, then headed to New York City to perform on the stage.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Joe E. Brown

October 25, 2019

Joseph Evans Brown was an American actor and comedian, remembered for his amiable screen persona, comic timing, and enormous smile. In 1902 at the age of nine, he joined a troupe of circus tumblers known as the Five Marvellous Astons which toured the country on both the circus and vaudeville circuits. Later he became a professional baseball player. After three seasons he returned to the circus, then went into Vaudeville and finally starred on Broadway. He gradually added comedy into his act and transformed himself into a comedian. He moved to Broadway in the 1920s first appearing in the musical comedy Jim Jam Jems.

In late 1928, Brown began making films, starting the next year with Warner Bros. He quickly shot to stardom after appearing in the first all-color all-talking musical comedy On with the Show. He starred in a number of lavish Technicolor Warner Brothers musical comedies including: Sally, Hold Everything, and Song of the West. By 1931, Joe E. Brown had become such a star that his name began to appear alone above the title of the movies in which he appeared.

He followed in Fireman, Save My Child, a comedy in which he played a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, with Elmer, the Great with Patricia Ellis and Claire Dodd, and Alibi Ike with Olivia de Havilland, in both of which he portrayed ballplayers with the Chicago Cubs.

In 1933 he starred in Son of a Sailor with Jean Muir and Thelma Todd. In 1934, Brown starred in A Very Honorable Guy with Alice White and Robert Barrat, and in The Circus Clown again with Patricia Ellis and with Dorothy Burgess and with Maxine Doyle in Six-Day Bike Rider. Brown was one of the few vaudeville comedians to appear in a Shakespeare film; he played Francis Flute in the Max Reinhardt/William Dieterle film version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and was highly praised for his performance. The following year saw Polo Joe with Carol Hughes and Richard “Skeets” Gallagher, and Sons O’ Guns. In 1933 and 1936, he managed to become one of the top ten earners in films. He was sufficiently well known internationally by this point to be depicted in comic strips in the British comic Film Fun for twenty years from 1933.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Joe Kirkwood, Jr.

October 25, 2019

Joe Kirkwood, Jr. is a former professional golfer on the PGA Tour, and a motion picture actor.

Kirkwood was born in Melbourne, Australia. His father Joe Kirkwood, Sr., who was a golf pro and who taught him to play golf, is acknowledged as having put Australian golf on the world map. In 1948, he and his father both made the cut at the U.S. Open, the first father and son to do so and a record tied only in 2004. When Joe Kirkwood, Jr. defeated Sam Snead to win the 1951 Blue Ribbon Open in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they became the third father-son winner in the history of the PGA Tour which in 2005 still has only six such winners.

In 1945, Joe Kirkwood, Jr. was invited by Monogram Pictures to test for the role of boxer Joe Palooka. He got the part and starred in eleven Joe Palooka films between 1946 and 1951 plus in the 1954 television series “The Joe Palooka Story.” Later in the 1950s he was one of the reporters on the popular radio program Monitor on NBC Radio.

Joe Kirkwood has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Joe Pasternak

October 25, 2019

Joseph Herman Pasternak was a Hungarian-born American film producer in Hollywood.

Born to a Jewish family in Szilágysomlyó, Austria-Hungary, Pasternak was a successful film producer in Germany and Austria by the time he was 28 years old.

Pasternak worked for Universal Pictures in Europe, where he made German-language musicals for the international market. He hit upon a successful formula, building light musical comedies around an adolescent soprano. Following the establishment of the Nazi regime, Pasternak emigrated to Universal's Hollywood studio in 1936. He adapted his usual format for English-speaking audiences, casting 14-year-old Canadian singer Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls. The film became a huge hit and saved Universal from bankruptcy. Pasternak produced a string of Durbin musicals, and soon discovered another talented soprano, Gloria Jean. who began her own successful series in 1939. Pasternak proved to be a real asset for the studio, generating a number of popular films through 1941, including Destry Rides Again and Seven Sinners.

In 1941 Pasternak moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he continued to produce operetta films, featuring the rich singing voices of Kathryn Grayson, Jane Powell, and Mario Lanza. His biggest MGM success came with The Great Caruso. He continued to make musicals for MGM into the 1960s, with Elvis Presley or Connie Francis.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Joe Penner

October 25, 2019

Joe Penner, was an American 1930s-era vaudeville, radio and film comedian. He was an ethnic Hungarian born as József Pintér in Nagybecskerek, Hungary, now Zrenjanin, Serbia. He passed through Ellis Island as a child when his family emigrated to New York City.

He was launched on his successful radio career by Rudy Vallée, appearances which led to his own Sunday evening half-hour, The Baker’s Broadcast, which began on the Blue Network October 8, 1933. Penner was a zany comic, noted for his famed catchphrase, “Wanna buy a duck?”, and his low hyuck-hyuck laugh. Penner’s other memorable catchphrase, often triggered by someone else’s double entendre remark, was, “You naaaasss-ty man!” He was voted radio’s top comedian in 1934, but a 1935 dispute with the ad agency over the show’s format resulted in Penner quitting The Baker’s Broadcast on June 30, 1935. Vox Pop began as a summer replacement series for Penner in 1935. A year later, he returned with The Joe Penner Show which began airing October 4, 1936 on CBS, sponsored by Cocomalt.

His films include College Rhythm, New Faces of 1937, The Day the Bookies Wept and Millionaire Playboy. He was caricatured by Tex Avery and Friz Freleng in the musical cartoon, “My Green Fedora”, “Can You Take It?” a “Popeye the Sailor” cartoon, and several pictures starring the bumbling stooge Egghead. He also made a cameo in the Disney cartoon “Mother Goose Goes Hollywood” in which he says, “Wanna buy a duck?”, and then shows Donald Duck on a plate.

After covering the 1932-34 rise of Jack Pearl, Elizabeth McLeod summed up Penner’s popularity:The ultimate Depression-era zany was Joe Penner. A forgotten performer today to most, and little more than a footnote to the average OTR fan, Penner was a national craze in 1933-34. There is no deep social meaning in his comedy, no shades of subtlety ? just utter slapstick foolishness, delivered in an endearingly simpering style that’s the closest thing the 1930s had to Pee-wee Herman. An added attraction was Penner’s in-character singing each week of a whimsical novelty song, especially written to suit his style. Like Pearl, however, Penner was doomed to early decline by the sheer repetitiveness of his format, even though he remained very popular with children right up to the end of his radio career.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Joe Williams

October 25, 2019

Joe Williams was a well-known jazz vocalist, a baritone singing a mixture of blues, ballads, popular songs, and jazz standards.

Williams was born Joseph Goreed in the small farming town of Cordele, Georgia. His father, Willie Goreed, left the family early on, but Williams' mother, Anne Beatrice Gilbert, who was 18 when she had her only child, provided a strong emotional bond until her death in 1968. Soon after Williams was born, his mother moved them in with her parents, who had enough money to support an extended family. During this time, Anne Gilbert was saving for a move to Chicago. Once she had made the move — alone — she began saving the money that she earned cooking for wealthy Chicagoans so that her family could join her. By the time Williams was four, he, his grandmother, and his aunt had joined his mother in Chicago, where they would live for many years.

Probably most important to Williams' later life was the music scene — fueled largely by African-American musicians — that thrived in Chicago in the early 1920s. Years later, he recalled going to the Vendóme Theatre with his mother to hear Louis Armstrong play the trumpet. Chicago also offered a host of radio stations that featured the then-rebellious sounds of jazz, exposing Williams to the stylings of Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Big Joe Turner, and many others. By his early teens, he had already taught himself to play piano and had formed his own gospel vocal quartet, known as "The Jubilee Boys", that sang at church functions.

During his mid-teens Williams began performing as a vocalist, singing solo at formal events with local bands. The most that he ever took home was five dollars a night, but that was enough to convince his family that he could make a living with his voice; so, at 16, he dropped out of school. After discussing it with his family, he began using the name "Williams" as a stage name, and he began marketing himself in earnest to Chicago clubs and bands. His first job was at a club called Kitty Davis's. Williams was allowed to sing with the band in the evening and keep the tips, which would sometimes amount to $20.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Joan Blondell

October 25, 2019

Rose Joan Blondell was an American actress. After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a Pre-code staple of Warner Brothers and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil. Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films released shortly before her death from leukemia, Grease and the remake of The Champ. Blondell was born to a vaudeville family in New York City. Her father, known as Eddie Joan Blondell, Jr., was born in Indiana in 1866 to French parents, and was a vaudeville comedian and one of the original Katzenjammer Kids. Blondell’s mother was Kathryn Cain, born April 13, 1884, in Brooklyn of Irish American parents. Her younger sister, Gloria, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and bears a strong resemblance to her older sister, Joan. Blondell also had a brother, the namesake of her father and grandfather. Her cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love.

Joan had spent six years in Australia and seen much of the world by the time her family, who had been on tour, settled in Dallas, Texas when she was a teenager. Under the name Rosebud Blondell, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant and placed fourth for Miss America in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September of that same year. She attended what is now the University of North Texas, then a teacher’s college, in Denton, where her mother was a local stage actress, and she worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, and a clerk in a New York store. Around 1927, she returned to New York, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway. In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in Penny Arcade.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Joan Caulfield

October 25, 2019

Joan Caulfield was an American actress and former fashion model. After being discovered by Broadway producers, she began a stage career in 1943 that eventually lead to signing as an actress with Paramount Pictures.

Born while her family resided in East Orange, New Jersey, she moved to West Orange during childhood but continued attending Miss Beard’s School in Orange, New Jersey. During her teenage years, the family moved to New York City where Joan eventually attended Columbia University.

One of her most memorable roles was when she was lent out to Warner Bros. to appear in The Unsuspected alongside Claude Rains and Audrey Totter. Later in life she appeared mostly on television, appearing on programs such as Cheyenne, Baretta, and Murder, She Wrote, with Angela Lansbury. In the 1957-1958 season, Caulfield starred in her own short-lived NBC situation comedy, Sally in the role of a traveling companion to an elderly widow, played by Marion Lorne. At midseason, Gale Gordon and Arte Johnson joined the cast.

An urban legend states that Caulfield’s film Dear Ruth inspired author J.D. Salinger to name the protagonist of his novel The Catcher in the Rye “Holden Caulfield” after seeing a movie theater marquee with the film’s stars: Caulfield and William Holden. However, Holden Caulfield was mentioned in Salinger’s short story “Last Day of the Last Furlough” in the July 15, 1944 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, three years before Dear Ruth. The earliest known use of the Caulfield name, including a mention of Holden, is in the unpublished 1942 story “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.” A more common version of the legend claims that Salinger was taken by Joan Caulfield upon first seeing her in a modeling photo or a publicity still or an acting performance. Since Joan was a leading model by 1941 and her acting career began in 1942 with an appearance in the short-lived Broadway musical “Beat the Band”, this version of the legend makes his using her surname for his character at least possible.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Joan Collins

October 25, 2019

Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE is an English actress, author, and columnist.

Collins was born in Paddington, London, the daughter of Elsa, a dance teacher and nightclub hostess, and Joseph William Collins, an agent whose clients would later include Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Tom Jones. Collins' South African?born father was Jewish and her British mother was Anglican. She has one sister, author Jackie Collins, and one brother, Bill Collins. Collins was educated at the Francis Holland School and then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Collins's childhood was spent in and around Maida Vale and was, according to Collins, an idyllic one with plenty of love, comfort and security. Her father, however, was also a strict disciplinarian and exerted a strong hold over her gentle mother, an attitude which came to irritate her daughters who sought to rebel against it. Collins has said of her father that 'he was detached, cold, hard, critical, difficult, acerbic, and everyone had to please him'. He said himself in his 1986 autobiography A Touch of Collins: 'I love my daughters but I am not the kind of parent who deludes himself that his children are superior to everyone else's. I did not think of them as particularly outstanding in any way'.

At the age of 17 Collins was signed to the J. Arthur Rank Film Company, a highly profitable British studio.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Joan Crawford

October 25, 2019

Joan Crawford, born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre. Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford’s fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These “rags-to-riches” stories were well-received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled “box office poison”.

After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.

Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages ended in divorce; the last ended with the death of husband Al Steele. She adopted five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother. Crawford’s relationships with her two older children, Christina and Christopher, were acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two and, after Crawford’s death, Christina wrote a “tell-all” memoir, Mommie Dearest, in which she alleged a lifelong pattern of physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by Crawford.

Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, the third child of Tennessee-born Thomas E. LeSueur and Anna Bell Johnson. Her older siblings were Daisy LeSueur, who died very young, and Hal LeSueur. Thomas LeSueur abandoned the family a few months before Crawford’s birth. He reappeared in Abilene, Texas, in 1930 as a 62-year-old construction laborer on the George R. Davis House, built in Prairie School architecture.